OLIKA SPELPLANER? En kvalitativ studie om hur SVT:s sportjournalister upplever deras rapportering och framställning av svenska dam- och herrfotbollslandslagen.

Abstract

This bachelor thesis examines how sport journalists at the Swedish public service Television (SVT) perceive the coverage and representation of the Swedish women’s and men’s national football teams within a public service context. National team football holds a central position in Swedish sportjournalism and plays an important role in constructing meanings related to gender, performance, and national identity. Despite explicit public service commitments to equality, previous research shows that sport media remain shaped by gendered norms in which men’s football often functions as the implicit standard. The aim of the study is to investigate which factors journalists perceive as influencing both the reporting and the portrayal of the women’s and men’s national football teams. The analysis is guided by media logic and representation theory, which together illuminate how journalistic practices and platform conditions shape gender representation in everyday editorial work. The study is based on a qualitative research design using six semi-structured interviews with journalists in different roles at SVT Sport and contributes a production-oriented perspective that complements earlier research dominated by content analyses. The findings show that coverage of the national football teams is strongly influenced by audience considerations, platform logics, and practical production conditions, even within public service journalism. Journalists describe a tension between reflecting existing audience interest and recognising journalism’s capacity to generate interest through editorial prioritisation. Digital platforms influence both news selection and storytelling practices, while access to players, media rights, and visual material shape which stories can be produced and how nuanced representations become. Women players are more frequently associated with responsibilities related to gender equality, while men’s football more often functions as a normative reference point. Although gender balance is monitored through quantitative targets such as a 50/50 goal, qualitative aspects of representation receive less systematic attention. Taken together, the results indicate that men’s national team football continues to be prioritised as the default reference within sport journalism, despite explicit public service ideals of equality. Gendered hierarchies are thus not only a matter of unequal visibility, but are reproduced through everyday editorial routines, evaluative criteria, and assumptions about audience relevance. Overall, the study demonstrates that gender representation in public service sport journalism is continuously negotiated in practice and shaped by the conditions of a digital media environment.